collectif Entretien avec Georges Lapassade
directed by Amelia
Grysole the camera
Augustine Mutual Benyounes Bellagnech, Alain, Laurent Kallyt dialogue
Aziz Kharoune sound and transcribing
maintenance of Georges was published in "irrAIductibles" global review of institutional analysis, No. 11, April 2007, University Paris 8
Mutual Augustine: There is the speech and writing. Several interviews could put a face on this issue in Africa where the word is alive, even when written, it remains The same word.
Grysole Amelia: This is an interesting feature nonetheless. Just before we continue, I would ask George if it did not bother filming. (George agrees).
Augustine: George, we will question you with a certain device. With any device, will we question you?
Benyounès Bellagnech: We will question you using the device of the group interview. It's open, Augustine opened during the interview today. We will explain to you rather than the device, the practice today and return later on the return to see what happened with the discussion. We discussed it last Friday. We wanted to know what brought thee Africa. For example, how is it that at some point, you've found to go every year in Morocco, to work initially on the possession, then the Gnawa, Essaouira on ... From this route then we would like you to talk to us.
Lapassade George: I'll try to respond, giving a possible answer and it is perhaps not alone. Before going to Morocco to work on Gnaouas ... I had discovered the Gnaouas, but very little. The word is rarely used. In Tunisia, there is a large community of blacks. For that, I advise you, I suggest you check out two researchers, authors of books, first Abdelhafid Chlyeh Gnaouas for Morocco and RIHD Ennafa, science teacher of Education, who now lives in Paris, which I do not know the address. You can find it by asking on my part. I suggest this possibility with double A. Chlyeh who wrote about the Gnawa of Morocco and one who wrote those articles about Tunisia.
Benyounès: Your first trip to Africa was in the framework of cooperation?
G. Lapassade: Yes, I was cooperating in Tunisia, more exactly at the University of Tunis in October 1965. I am immediately interested in Stambali, that is to say the ritual Gnaouas Tunis. This led me to ask me questions about the black community in Tunisia and all the cultural problems of blacks. And that's how I learned a few months later, around March-April 1966, organizing the first Festival of Negro Arts. They called so because it was the initiative of Leopold Senghor, who was the bard of blackness with Aimé Césaire and others on the one hand, and secondly Andre Malraux, who was Minister of Culture of De Gaulle. Together, they produced this huge festival. It was the first and there were no other then, to my knowledge. They had produced the first World Festival of Negro Arts, where blacks found themselves in America, Africa, Jamaica, West Indies, in short, everywhere. I went to this festival. It was the first trip I was in black Africa, was in Dakar. It was very rich. At this festival in Dakar in April 1966, I was with Jean Rouch, who was a well-known Africanist. We all attended a rite of ownership Ndepp Senegalese, they were (inaudible Lebou-descendants of the people), that is to say the fishermen of the Atlantic Coast of Senegal. I have a lot to say about this ritual was much more complete, richer, more developed, it lasted a whole week, with well-defined phases, sacrifices ...
The creation of the altar that I called Altar of dissociation. I have not seen any, but I was the major steps of Ndepp. In this ritual that Balandier describes in his book The Ambiguous Africa where he has devoted a whole chapter on Ndepp and Africa.
Besides, I do not know why I talked about Gnaouas during a radio show in Dakar and this had happened to the ears of President Leopold Senghor, who, some time later came an official visit to Tunisia. He invited me to meet him. It was a very friendly, very friendly when he said that for him, Bourguiba was a friend, but for Bourguiba, it was his little negro.
Benyounès: It is from there as a teacher and you've brought a group of Stambali to make a representation on the faculty of Tunis?
G. Lapassade: I do not know, I do not think because I was told that it was not possible. Students told me it was very secret. In families, it was closed, you could not access them. What they were wrong indeed. You'd have to organize yourself one. But me, I did not have a family to be treated, I could not get the support of blacks Stambali. But I held one in an institute of sports, it caused a scandal because boys and girls began to dance, but dance ... but how to dance modern dances. Immediately, the director of the Institute of Sport telephoned the minister who called me. That caused a scandal and this has weakened my position in Tunis, where I stayed a little over a year. But they did not do the ritual. They made their music and it was dancing. It is said that Gnaouas ... I myself have written an article, an interview. The interviewer who published the article of our interviews, the article was published in Jeune Afrique .... Why I wrote about him, but this I missed, I can not remember the beginning of my sentence.
Benyounès: You were talking about how the ritual had taken place that you had tried to organize and had not worked as you wanted.
G. Lapassade: And who has not functioned as a ritual. Besides, I wanted at this point, (it's completely disjointed remarks that I am one) say that contrary to what was said, everywhere, in newspapers where they said, even in the article, maintaining that the author is the one who interviewed me, who published the article in Jeune Afrique, I forgot his name ...
Augustine Olivier Barlet
G. Lapassade Olivier Barlet, is a specialist in African and African cinema in general. He titled it, The Gnawa, therapists of the difference. I think it is a bit unfair to present the Gnaouas as therapists, although if asked, they say yes, in advertising in this image of musicians therapists, but in fact it must be said, even if speak no more of Gnaouas today, it is not the Gnaouas which therapy, but therapy of a psychic, a fortune teller. Perhaps, among the North Africans here, you Benyounès perhaps Aziz and others, if he knows when there is therapy, not therapy in the psychoanalytic sense but what I would call a therapy dissociation. The individual responsible for this therapy is the light or medium that uses, among others, to ensure Gnaouas therapeutic moment in Ndepp as I alluded. The ritual of possession Senegalese dances of possession come close a week of action or therapeutic procedures, the most important, Thursday is the sacrifice of an animal and the construction of an altar on pottery that contain the guts of this animal. So the rite of collective ownership, collective ownership of the dances are spectacular also conducted by a healer or a healer. Dances of possession in the district where there has been intervention, coming close on the last day for one week therapy, which probably the most important founding document for the first time, the sacrifice is leading the same day to create an altar on which we could make offerings to rab (dissociated part of the personality). Therefore, I say it is an altar of dissociation because at first is the idea of \u200b\u200ba more or less by the rab which is an animal, a mysterious, like a genie, as in Arab countries ... So this turmoil a person possessing spirit and what we call the Western language therapy is to liberate, to relieve that person, not by removing the symptom that is causing the disorder that is a possession no longer welcome. It does not end the possession, but the move is to say that spirit, the rab which torments the person, no longer in the troubled person but in this altar where the person throughout his life, will bring offerings of milk and other products.
If you want, it's interesting from the standpoint of therapy in Africa. It is a therapy owned and reconciliation of its possessor is considered beneficial. What is very different from the single form of ownership that we know and which was known in Europe of diabolical possession. And since it is a demonic possession, can not be reconciled with the devil. The devil must be expelled, it is an exorcism. What is very important in Africa, African culture, there is also the exorcism in Africa, but this practice is unknown, not practiced in all of Europe with few exceptions, there is a practice that involves building adorciste reconciliation. So some sort of arrangement with dissociation. It is not just a practice to stop the pathological dissociation dissociations because there are not pathological. This is another case, we can talk if you want, but the pathological dissociation is the fragmentation of identity in the West claiming to be possessed by the devil possessed by an evil spirit. The only solution is to send off this spirit is to chase it. It's exorcism, whereas in Africa, very often this is not the hunt is to coax and friend to friend with him.
Benyounès: Living.
G. Lapassade: Living, this is very important for the study of African ritual, there we are. When we talk about Gnaouas way too fast, you think they are exorcists. As I have said and I repeat, this is not the Gnawa who are therapists, is a psychic, a therapist. There are two designations for sighted in Morocco. The showy, usually one that draws the maps, which reads in the coffee and something like that is the Chouaf. But there is another type of medium is the word that comes from Tala Tala which means raising and it raises the spirits. That is why we call it the tala. It is in state of trance mediumship because it is a medium that one, it's not like the other, the medium is his mouth, his body at the disposal of a spirit friend of her - not a torturer, with whom she has reconciled with whom she works to describe, diagnose disease and indicate that with which it must deal. The Tala not only is not attached to Gnaouas, but may appeal to Gnaouas as assistants. One important thing to her, which seems to me fundamental and resembles Ndepp is the existence of a table, mida. A table that is not a work table is like a little table in her room where she officiated in his secret room. On this table, it puts food each week. It fuels his or her spirits owners and employees. She is at the center of the therapy and this therapy is aided by African Gnaouas whose roles are to be assistants. They are not therapists, contrary to what is sometimes said in the press, etc.. It is as if one compares, in the Catholic church, the priest and the organist who holds the organ. This is not the organist at the center of the ritual of the Mass, the priest - and the organist was his assistant. That we can say to refocus the issue of Gnawa, their collaboration is called therapy.
Benyounès: Everything you just tell us, is what one might call this namely, that the knowledge gathered in the field. Initially, these are field data you have observed.
G. Lapassade: Yes, mida, the mida, I saw her once. Because it's seen as something that we should not see. The stranger, even a Moroccan, an alien at home should not see. It is kept in a special by Tala and it looks like the altar of Rab I mentioned earlier that was built on the side of Dakar, a suburb of Dakar at the end of ceremonies Ndepp .
Benyounès: You started to talk about the festival in Dakar, Senegal, Tunisia, where then you first discover an interest in these groups. Specifically, you wanted to know what was happening. Thereafter, you have got used to go to Morocco each year. And that's where you wanted your work further observation.
G. Lapassade: There was less efficient, slower, less deep, I would say in Morocco and Senegal, is curious. I spent much time in the Maghreb, especially Tunisia and Morocco, but I have not even had access to therapy. I have not had access to therapy and this therapy is called a psychic, by a therapist. I did not have access at all. I've only seen the Gnaouas empowered in their role of musicians. This role is best known in the West and gives rise, now at a festival in Essaouira Gnawa annually. That, yes, I've seen it many times, but as I told you, and we must understand, this ritual they practice, they are not executives, it the visionary who convene for a moment in the therapeutic session where there is something else that intervention Gnaouas. But these Gnaouas were empowered with the media, my own work as a propagandist of Gnaouas since 1969 and now they are known by the International Festival of Gnawa and world which is held annually in Essaouira. They became stars of globalization, they play with jazz musicians, etc.. We must see that it was not that, at first, probably, they were involved primarily as an assistant or a therapist that this was not the only therapeutic procedure, far from it, since the sacrifice was more therapeutic. But I saw the sacrifice by the Gnawa, I attended. It was a Gnaoui, who was known in Essaouira, who was walking with his red blood djellaba. I insist that, because you address the situation and the almost universal belief on that aspect. Perhaps, RIHD Ennafaa for Tunisia and Chlyeh in their two books, they were not quite clear about what I just said, this division of roles and responsibilities in therapeutic sequences.
Augustine: Does it follow that you have built the concept of dissociation?
G. Lapassade: No, I have not only built this concept following Gnaouas; is outside that, I do not know how I came to that. I have not built this concept, it comes from Pierre Janet, if you want very quickly, there are two stages of dissociation, there is the definition of dissociation as pathological and it is Janet and his successors, but Janet was only be the culmination, as I have shown in my book The Discovery of dissociation. Janet was the culmination of a whole century of work, from Mesmer to be the cause of hypnosis, if you will, which made cures in Vienna and Paris, through trance around a bucket that contained water he said magnetized. There were people around, it's a bit more than this table, there were people around who plunged a piece of scrap metal in the water magnetized by Mesmer, he said, a bit like holy water and that was his therapy. Then there was his disciple, the Marquis de Puysegur Satan who had replaced by "passes" there was that too, and there were ropes that concealed a magnetized shaft, etc.. There was also a tub of Mesmer and had a whole ritual of formal hypnosis clients. And then there was Janet. Janet knows very well what I just mentioned and myself, I raised the various sequences mark the passing of Janet Mesmer in my book on the discovery of dissociation. Janet has not talked about dissociation, he talked about mental disintegration, he believed that hysterics suffer from disintegrating, the weakening of the personality and their energy capacity, which allowed the disease to move from deficit , so it's false, it is no deficit, the conflict comes the hysteria. But in the dissociation, then there was an expert in hypnosis, an experimentalist named Ernest Hilgard whose works were not found even here in France, Bernheim said in his book, he argues that apart from pathological dissociation, there may be a normal dissociation. I work myself back then to talk about the normal dissociation that appears to have resources.
Alain Monlouis: Tell us about trance in Brazil.
G. Lapassade: I went to Brazil, when I had the opportunity to travel - academic mission - in summer 1970, I believe, but this does not mean that I left the Maghreb. I kept going in the Maghreb, it was easy, it was less expensive, much cheaper to go to Morocco. I took my habits in Essaouira Moroccan basically. While in Brazil, I went twice, once in 1970, as part of an international meeting of pedagogy which was funded by the Olivetti company in its subsidiary in Brazil that made typewriters. So they invited us to many, there was Michael Lobrot, there were quite a few social psychologists French and French teachers. Then in 1972 I went to replace Rene Lourau who was invited but did not go, I do not know why. That's how I made these voyages Brazil. But it was during the second, where I have seen firsthand what is popularly called macumba, but is officially called the Lumbanda. I attended the education of mediums, excuse me, I will speak by association, by transduction. Yes, I attended the training mediums because I was with a young student whose father was right in the movement of the Macumba and in particular should provide training mediums. You should know that there was a big influence, not therapists such as Janet, but the teacher has called Rivail given a pseudonym, Alain Cardec who founded the church of cardéciste Cardec which is present everywhere, even here in France, but more often present in Brazil. Where she mixed practice cardéciste. The kind of hypnosis was combined with the African rites. Very dramatic, demonstrative, this marriage of cardécisme and Africa, Africanism, so to speak, was particularly lively. In Haiti, where officials of voodoo, voodoo ritual, the rite of possession but also are sometimes called non-therapeutic Maïkiseur which is a distortion of the word hypnotist Mesmer. Mesmer called it animal magnetism and was called the 19th century, people who practiced hypnosis in fact, they were called hypnotists. It was imported into Haiti, thanks to a brother of the family whose eldest Puysegur became famous because he systematized hypnosis was implicit in Mesmer, his other brother, an officer of the Navy brought in mesmerism Haiti, where he combined with voodoo.
I need to sort things out there, the night is that my thoughts go very fast. So this psychological mechanism, I see where I want to happen, seeing where I want to happen, I do, but leaving aside, crossing, forgetting the links that make me get where I'm coming. Mutual
Augustine: I go back a little on the dissociation, you spoke of Janet, where you're located in relation to Janet at Hilgard and Africa in this field of dissociation? Your thoughts turn to what direction?
G. Lapassade: Janet defines pathological dissociation and Hilgard who is normalized. My thought is that of Hilgard in most cases, that is to say, as normal and as a resource. For Hilgard, is a resource, it illustrates very simply by saying that a motorist may, at a time, operating and monitoring the road and look ahead or risk an accident to happen to him. Must supervise the trip, what happens to him, behind or beside and at the same time, it can discuss, talk with his neighbor, his passenger. That is the simple dissociation. There are two interventions, controls. This is the road and the discourse and the presence of his neighbor, his passenger is a simple dissociation and there all the time in life. It's the same thing for a teacher, he can talk to people and dream that it will make the next holiday. It can also monitor and watch the audience is another thing to develop his speech. There is development work for you answer, you should build something, build a speech and secondly, I can be attentive to what is happening around me, right and left, the camera is in front of me, etc.. So this is a dissociation, but normal.
Augustine: Why, then, the therapy, because if you stay on the dissociation, the dissociation of normality?
G. Lapassade: Because I think what I wrote in a book just published a month ago, entitled The Myth of identity. There is a chapter in anthropology. In this chapter, I take two key figures in religion, say some traditional religions, which are the shaman and the Medium or medium and also, perhaps, I do not say it enough. It is characteristic that the two have in common, their training, their vocation. The form in which their training and career and fulfilled their vocation, in both cases, very often, but not always, there is a disorder in adolescence, adolescent dissociation. They run away or they run away from home. And running away if we look at the global manual, I forgot his name, pathology, psychiatry, in its fourth edition, there is a chapter on dissociation where one of the pathological aspects of dissociation, but there is no pathological in the middle of Psychiatry, there is the fugue, dissociative fugue, which is still known as pathology. As it happens, as well as shamans and mediums, often from their vocation, there are runaways. They take refuge in the forest, they leave their homes. We even see it in Morocco or Algeria, in certain vocations Tala, some healers, as they are called mediums. There this kind of tradition of a runaway teenager, initially. It is a disassociation that will turn around, turn into normal dissociation. It does not eliminate cleavage as was Janet. Western therapy would aim to eliminate dissociation, while there, it is seen with, it is reconciled in the transformation. It is spectacular in what I could live with shamans and psychics and even the customer base to be called therapeutic intervention in Africa, dissociation is not eliminated as a definitely pathological disorder that should be released in ... reconstructing identities, but it is somewhere in a corner of the personality. It is constitutive of the personality and even the art when it comes to making a trade. The Tala specialists dissociation, managers dissociation, remain differentiated for therapeutic purposes. So we can say that in Africa, unlike Europe, there is development of dissociation, there was no attempt to eliminate. (...)
G. Lapassade: Does that answer the question?
Augustine: Yes, yes!
G. Lapassade: That a dash of African, African psychology, Africans, the availability of dissociation, perhaps that Africans are less unified than Europeans, who are carrying a cleavage, a constituent of dissociation their identity.
Lawrence: Is there a cultural disconnect?
G. Lapassade: What do you mean by cultural disconnect?
Alain: For example, if I take the case of the West Indies on which I work a little bit. In the Caribbean, there are several objections that can be found in individuals. There are caveats that are related to historical facts, Matriarchy-Orthodox opposition. Family systems vis-à-vis the individuals who were slaves, who were often from the matriarchal system, which have been enslaved by people who are often from the patriarchal system. These people found themselves in a land where they must produce goods and all that. There is another dissociation in their language and their language is found in dissociation with another language.
G. Lapassade: I can not follow you, I do not understand!
Alain: I say, if I take the case of the Caribbean ...
G. Lapassade: Here, where there is the voodoo ritual which is a dissociative by lightning since there possession ritual.
Alain: Before talking about voodoo, I am referring to the opposition between what is patriarchy and matriarchy among family systems that create separation among individuals.
G. Lapassade: Yes, because individuals living in both matriarchy and patriarchy.
Alain: Because in fact what happens is, the Europeans are the patriarchal system, them, they espoused the patriarchate of fact, while these people came from a matriarchal system.
G. Lapassade: So, the Haitians, they have both.
Alain: They have both, and somehow, they can not lie when you have both.
G. Lapassade: Yes, the Europeans have imposed a dissociation.
Alain: They imposed a dissociation.
G. Lapassade: A dissociation, as they say here for the children of immigrants. It imposes a separation, since they live in their family a certain tradition, a culture and a lifestyle that rejects school. That the company rejects ambient, so there is here, created in children of immigrants and among immigrants themselves, a dissociation.
Alain: It creates a loss of bearings and can cause insanity.
Augustine: In the writings, I wonder if the dissociation is a resource.
G. Lapassade: To Hilgard.
Augustine: I want to know about you, George G.
Lapassade: Yes, I'll give you a simple example. To answer you, I need both to connect me to your question, I focus on your question, you create with a pair, that is to say a short circuit, but I did not abandon the others. Even if there is a short-circuit with you, a dual relationship that is built with you, there nevertheless exists a relationship with other and this dissociation.
Augustine: Okay, here is the ordinary, everyday reality, but there is a crisis of dissociation. At one point, you talk a person running away. I work with adolescents, there are runaways.
G. Lapassade: Because they are separated.
Augustine: Dissociated, this dissociation, there is a point where it must go through a phase of normalization, so there is a therapy.
G. Lapassade: So how do we do with teenagers? There is a therapy of dissociation, but this is not therapy
African
Augustine: How we do? This is not therapy in Africa. I'm asking the question: What is your view in relation to the therapy of unbundling? Taking the example of what Toby was doing with Nathan ethnopsychiatry here is what you you have a look over the dissociation of therapy?
G. Lapassade: I am not a practitioner of therapy, no therapy. Is what he was doing therapy dissociation Tobie Nathan? I knew very well Tobie Nathan, I even published an article in his magazine on dissociation. I think he did not use the word dissociation. I did not follow all his teaching , Because for him it is a Western concept of reality corresponding to only Western and he prefers to use the native language as they say, when he was dealing with another culture. He was not inclined to generalize the concept of dissociation, even for immigrant children. It was much more cultural. You worked with Nathan?
Augustine: I worked ... my son's mother was a psychiatrist with Nathan. But I worked because I followed ... and then there was one person who has published extensively with Lucien, who was a professor who still teaches there, with whom I had to take a little work. That's what touched me, which I posed as a question, if I question you: how and where in this installment of dissociation, the dishes do you have?
G. Lapassade: But possession is the form. That is what will tell Rene Scherer, moreover, with whom I took as a contributor, one of the authors of my book group that I led, entitled Glance dissociation teenager. He said: "There are seven eyes, there are seven cases of dissociation in the context of possession. It was a small state, that was in my area, which was possessed by the devil. He was a Catholic and was exorcised by the monks, by monks of a monastery that I visited the northern entrance of Béarn in the Landes. I found this case in the shallows of the municipal library of Pau, where he slept, I took it out and I published it. So, I have published the case of child Puysegur which was unbearable for his family and for everyone and that Puysegur was treated by the mesmerism as a sort of hypnosis. And he published the newspaper. It's a whole book, even two books, the newspaper of this therapy.
So Scherer had written the conclusion of this book and he told me one day, finally the most clear case of what is called dissociation, it is the possession of small state because then at least we see dissociation . What does this mean in this case: it is possession, it is the religious definition of dissociation, dissociation. But we do not call it dissociation in religious language, it is called possession. Now, what does that mean the possession, that is to say that the person lives as if he had the devil in the skin. His identity is dissociated, a part of it is pretty normal and the other hand, faith became the devil, finally, that the persecuted. Thus, possession is a clear case of dissociation. Dissociation is secular name of possession, so to say. In the works of Janet, if there is a very, very rich as I have often quoted, which is the case of a psychiatrist who has possession because it is lucid adoptive possession and lucid somnambulism and lucid. Possession sleepwalking is someone to awaken from its crisis of possession that has forgotten what happened while he who is lucid can speak and can comment possession. I do not know why I say all this.
Benyounès Bellagnech: This is to distinguish between possession and dissociation
G. Lapassade: Possession is the theological definition of dissociation, the possessed is dissociated in fact, there are two beings in himself, I have two souls to me ...
Benyounès: In Arabic, it is said lived (Meskoun)
G. Lapassade: Meskoun, lived, yes, exactly, we can start from meskoun to this speech and it's easier to do it in Arabic and French, in Western language because it is more present in the North African culture at least, perhaps throughout the Arab culture.
Benyounès: We dare not say, no one dares say, this is equivalent to the Western onthologie. Lived in the Meskoun the Junun when the Meskoun wakes up, it's a bit close to hysteria, but this has nothing to do, is something that lives, that's part of their lives That's why I say it's onthologie home. That's life, it's lived. He lives with, he lives with, he creates rituals, but not to cure them is to ease, but never say it is useless to be inhabited. Unmanned, is inhabited. The conclusion of George, in his book The Discovery of dissociation, that was it, this is the difference between the actual processing of the experience possessed, of Meskounins (Plural of Meskoun) lived their normal rest, he returns to normalcy . They are not part of those we should care.
G. Lapassade: Who?
Benyounès: The Meskounins, those with Junun within themselves.
G. Lapassade: We do not treat!
Benyounès : We do not heal, they live like others.
Aziz: But still, they always say Meskoun.
Benyounès: Yes, we always say Meskoun is for housing, it is like here in the West found it (...). They say, for example, in a house where there are many dead, is said to be inhabited, it is inhabited by spirits, haunted. It also exists in space, geographical locations.
Alain: What explains that once we returned to this house, we hear voices, noises. They say it is haunted.
G. Lapassade: That because there were girls who heard sounds and noises in an American house that we became interested in mediumship and stuff like that. This has played a very important story haunted house. That's all the early American and Western occult sciences. But it is true in North African culture, these cases of dissociation are not called dissociation. In fact, it's simple, it is commonplace, it is the everyday, at least in popular belief.
Benyounès Bellagnech: That is not psychopathology.
G. Lapassade: We uses healers to exorcise.
Benyounès: For extreme cases, because if you take all the people who inhabited; me, I've known in my family from time to time, people who fall, they begin to release their language, we can say it's a hysterical condition. It's very expressive. You never think to bring them to the doctor, or at the light, the seer, nor to the marabout, or in someone else. We do not think to do that. There are fears, because from time to time someone drives a tractor was feared that this happens to him when he drives the tractor. We are afraid for him, was afraid for his life, this never happened, this does not pose a problem. This is an example among many.
G. Lapassade: And he was possessed!
Benyounès: Yes, yes, he was possessed, I knew two others, one girl and one boy, were friends at university. Coincidentally, for the girl, it does it never happens outdoors, it does it sometimes when there are somebody. Once she was home I did not know, this has happened, she was lying and someone who knew her, told me that this has happened, it's like that. Then there was another friend, he, it could happen to him outside. From time to time, when you see him with bruises on her eyes, it seems, seeing that he was beaten to death, it is indescribable. However, neither he nor his family, do not recognize the condition of this expression, the symptom of this crisis where the body is abused.
G. Lapassade: It does not appeal to ...
Benyounès: This would not, in these cases I told you, no, maybe in others. That is what I experienced, what I seen, people I know.
G. Lapassade: These things I'm talking about are much more present and one might wonder why they are more familiar with you here. It is curious, there is a familiarity with the dissociation, a kind of arrangement that occurs, except when there are even therapeutic rituals are therapies such as dissociation Ndepp Africa, we do not seek to eliminate, eradicate, to remove, but to agree with, to develop and that is what is called adorcisme. There's this table that we built during the ritual Ndepp I saw and I attended in Dakar. On this table, the ex-patient cured is held every week, throughout his life, to milk and other, because, now, is there rab. It is in the altar, is a development of dissociation. This table, which altar is, as I said earlier, in Gnaouas among therapists that the Maghreb called Mida. The Mida is the table. An altar table, a table of religion, religious function, so is the development of dissociation. Dissociation through the table and healed person, will be released each week of tributes, his whole life on this table. We do not seek to remove dissociation, but to set out. And to ensure that the person eventually make domestic worship. Mutual
Augustine: And this position is that you think is related to the fact that in Africa, we say that dissociation is a reality that can not light up. So we must live with, or rather what could be a positive view of the separation, saying that it is a resource that must be managed or it can go in all directions.
G. Lapassade: A resource-I apologize 've cut, a resource, it means that when used, it becomes useful. But I say it is a resource for professionals in the dissociation and not for everyone.
Benyounès, Thou hast called it institutionalized in the book.
G. Lapassade: Yes, that institutionalization
Benyounès: Institutionalization, it means he is talking about the possessed ... They become like marabouts ... They become the most important group in which they live and they are not affected by this symptom. It becomes, its institutionalization is a form of Veneration for this state of someone who is inhabited by spirits who come from outside. That is its institutionalization, it becomes a landmark, it can become a healer. He is revered, it is more important than in the rest of the group in which he lives. Compared to that, George, I have a question maybe ...
G. Lapassade: We can talk about Mejdoub too.
Benyounès: Yes, we can talk about Mejdoub too, that we brought here, that we had here is a real Mejdoub! We feel that it bothers us
G. Lapassade: It's you and me who have made such Mejdoub
Benyounès: Yes, absolutely, yes, I said. Him, he wrote and it is new, because normally, he (Mejdoub) does not write, he speaks in the street, he speaks when he wants to talk, he does what he wants to do and he does not care context. For him, there is no context, there is no situation. Mejdoub, that's it. When he has something to say, he says in the street or people gather around him that does not stop him going in his delirium. The Mejdoub, it has a self-expression and this art, he uses at will. Recently, I told him that I am ready to defend to the end, what he writes. He has a way of writing that does not exist, it means that creates things not seen elsewhere. It is a Mejdoud. Its novelty is to transform the state of Mejdoub, the state of speech, as you said earlier in Africa, is the word. Him, he saw as Mejdoub here in the West. He is divorced and her cleavage, he transforms it into writing and it's great. The question I wanted to ask you, it came from there ...
G. Lapassade: Me, I'm starting to feel a bit disassociated from that fiscal year. How long have you interview me? Almost an hour.
Benyounès: From the methodological point of view, this is the discussion that led me to ask this question. Is what we could not tell you as an ethnologist, - because what you bring it as an ethnologist in the field you've seen-is-what we could not say that the ethnographer observes the known groups, that is to say set up somewhere. Is it not locked up in the observation of known groups.
G. Lapassade: What does this mean? I do not understand.
Benyounès: It means that you, your experience in Morocco was Essaouira where you were going to watch Gnaouas to work on them.
G. Lapassade: I went to Essaouira because I'm used to love Essaouira is a city where Gnaouas are preferred. Besides, this goes a little theme of Africa, which is very curious, indeed, in the Maghreb and even Morocco, the Gnawa are in a corner. You can see them, I think Safi example, one can see how the Halka, Halka is the the circle. You can see how the Halka, at the end of the day, at nightfall, to pick up some money to do the quest and they do this kind of show in circles and people are standing around him, before him, in front of them. They are, as we see, the Jemaa, they dance, they play with their iron castanets; goumbri others, which is a kind of African guitar. We know them more in that role where ritual in the nights with dissociation, with states of possession. Followers, devotees, it is not only sick in the evenings, these are people who are capable of dissociation, able to go into a trance and supposedly to embody the spirits. And a mind is a separation medium that since the dance, which is owned as they say, at a time, becomes a spirit, but retains its identity.
Althabe Gerard said he had worked on Troumbis Madagascar and one day, a medium who was present, had directed towards him and he had verbally abused him, saying "get lost, that That is what you come to watch us here. You have no place here, you do not spy on us. " This happened during and after the rite when the rite was completed, the same medium is Althabe went to apologize. So he knew what he was doing as a medium ritually possessed, but he admitted, so to speak, he expressed when he apologized to him. That is to say that even if he was in a state of possession, as I say, there was an "observer" of tolerance, a watchman, as Hilgard said, there was a watcher, a supervisor. Over-careful in itself is a hidden observer. Hilgard, a hidden observer of the state of hypnosis, trance. In the trance state, since there is a dissociation watcher who is not in a trance. This can be seen at the end of the book, and many other examples, Moreau de Tours, who was a psychiatrist who has published a book called hashish and mental alienation, and that he, consumed hashish. As was fashionable around 1850, there was Baudelaire who participated in this in Ile Saint Louis. There was a club where people use drugs to experience that state, practices such as artificial wrote Baudelaire. And Moreau de Tours, at the very end, said of his book on hashish when he talks about his consumption of hashish: "I get fit watching my delusions. " So there was a period when he was delirious not. He looked delirious, there is a dissociation. Besides, this is what happens in psychedelic states, with people who use substances, cannabis, for example.
Augustine So there it is dissociation from the product as the shaman, like ...
G. Lapassade: As kif, like hashish, which are products psychedelic drugs as they say regularly, these products are dissociative. They enhance dissociation.
Augustine: When we think of healing in black Africa, they tell you: take this or that product and you go into another world where you see things.
G. Lapassade: Yes, that's the dissociation. A part of you going elsewhere, such as possession. And it's funny, we were talking about Africa and there is talk of unbundling, as if it was the same subject. This morning, in this interview, it turned to dissociation, maybe in Africa it is more common and more commonplace. We are not careful. It is daily, it is better living. It is sought even when there are drugs and stuff like that. She is also sought from us, among junkies. So, is what is spoke of Africa or dissociation?
Augustine was mentioned ... separation of Africa. It is still important, we had read this text, it is still of dissociation.
G. Lapassade: The text of the interview! With the interview that you mentioned!
Augustine: Yes, there is the spoken, but you gave us as an ethnologist your perspective, your outlook on African dissociation, the experience of dissociation. That may be why when you make a paper on the interview, you will restore the replay to see if we can complete yet other questions about your experience with Africa. You can always add it, you'll see if there are things we can question you.
G. Lapassade: For example Ndepp with rab altar, the table, the experience I had with Rouch's what we were doing and that I made in 1966 from Tunis. I met Jean Rouch, we were great friends. He died fairly recently. I was invited to the festival. I also met Michel Leiris. I brought Rouch Rouch Leiris and I brought in a suburb of Dakar, Grand Yoff, where we have seen together at certain times of the whole week that is the Ndepp.
Augustine: He made a movie about it.
G. Lapassade: Yes, he made a film masters crazy movie that made him famous, which is a rite of possession. The median, people, they were migrant workers in Ghana who made the rite in which they slaughtered a dog. They ate dogs and they went into a trance. They imitated, they embodied in the ritual of the English authorities. For example, to symbolize the wig soldiers of the Queen, they were breaking an egg on the skull, it dripped.
Augustine It's a beautiful film, there was a festival, I do not know where! Me, I took it during a festival on Jean Rouch ...
Benyounès: Each year there is something about Jean Rouch at Beaubourg.
Augustine: I did not follow at Beaubourg.
G. Lapassade: It's a beautiful movie. We finally here!
This group interview was conducted by: Amelia
Grysole the camera
Augustine Mutual Benyounès Bellagnech,
Monlouis Alain Laurent Kallyt.
Aziz Kharoune sound and transcribing
Revised by Bernadette Bellagnech Published in The
IrrAIductibles No. 11 "African Studies"
